Hot on the news that Azzedine Alaia talked smack about Karl Lagerfeld and Anna Wintour, we learn that Giorgio Armani had a field day trash talking his contemporaries to reporters earlier this week. Armani apparently accused “houses such as Prada and Dolce & Gabbana [of making] men look ridiculous and blamed the press for not being more critical about clownish styles that men don’t wear.”

And yes, he goes on:

“I’ve wanted to say something about this for awhile, and now’s the time: fashion is in the in the hands of the banks (and) the stock market. It no longer belongs to the owners, but to those above them. I still haven’t been able to understand how the banks influence our line of work — it’s a mystery. I don’t have debts. Instead, Prada’s problem is that they have to pay back the money that the banks spent to build up the brand. There are thousands of ways to make money. But for me, I don’t want to wind up having to knock on the door of some Thai managers to explain myself.”

He also offered some backhanded praise to Miuccia Prada by calling the designer “ingenious” for her “irony…and bad taste that becomes chic.” He added that collections which are “sometimes ugly” always get positive coverage in the press. “You know why…”

It’s strange that here we have a (comparatively) commercial designer like Armani criticizing a more off-kilter one like Prada… for being governed by investors, a slave to profit.